The Timeless Child
by MsKitty89
Summary: The Doctor keeps his promise to Amy after New York and tells Amelia a story, though not the story she is expecting.


The Timeless Child – Doctor Who?

Sitting beside Amelia as she slept on the night she waited, it was time to tell her a story as she'd asked me to after New York. Taking a deep breath I decided not to tell her of our adventures together but of one of the oldest stories from my world. A tale of a child, a murderer, a wanderer and the greatest mystery in the whole wide universe.

"Now how to begin, ah how all tales for children begin." Once upon a time, a very long time ago before there were time lords or ladies before the discovery of time travel or the birth of the Eye of Harmony, in a small village on Galifrey our story begins. It was that quiet hour just before daybreak where everyone is asleep and peaceful when a cry split the predawn air, a cry filled with such pain and loss that all who woke and heard it felt a tear role down their cheek in subconscious sympathy. The first villagers to rush out of their homes came across a naked child barely 5 years of age, weeping uncontrollably in the centre of the gathering of homes. A mother came forward from the throng gathering the child into her arms comforting him as only a mother can. Someone else came forward with a robe to cover the child, as the mother knelt with the boy, wrapping him snugly and using a spare corner to dry his tears. The child's tears subsiding under the comfort and care from the mother.

"What's wrong sweatheart?" she asked watching his face. The childs now dry eyes stared back at her filled with something unknowable, mutely he shook his head.

"Ok, what's your name little one?" she asked as her neighbour added "Where is your mother or father child?" again the little head shook sending auburn curls tumbling around his small shoulders. "Very well, would you like to come with me for now until we can figure out where you came from and what to do next?" she gently asked him. Nodding the child let a tiny smile show as the mother gathered him up again before moving back to her home and her young daughter. So began the childs new life with his new mother and sister.

The boy never spoke a word or made a sound after that initial cry, it was like everything he could ever express had been fulfilled in that single moment. Years passed his sister got bigger soon towering over him but always there to speak up for him and give him a voice in the world. Their mother aged too her once smooth face gaining wrinkles etched by a million smiles and frowns, her grip grew looser, her frame stooped though her hugs weren't diminished in his eyes. But worry loomed large in her gaze as the lost child who she had taken in so long ago was still just that, a child barely more than 5 years old. As her mother withered and aged his sister promised to watch over him, taking him into her marital home when she married raising him with her own children before passing the duty to her eldest daughter and her eldest after that. Decades passed into centuries with the boy mute following generation upon generation of his first mothers family, his name changing each generation as the family moved (not his true name of course no one knew that, not even him).

He spent his time between reading all he could on every subject under the suns and playing like the child he resembled. He created things beyond anything anyone had ever seen mathematics in multiple dimensions, machines made to operate in specific timeframes. He created the concept of dimensional engineering and temporal geometry, dabbled in genetic manipulation and tried to find the cause of his existence. Along the way his family came into contact with other great thinkers Omega Rassilon both geniuses taking his basic concepts and running with them. Between the three of them the Eye of Harmony was born, time travel was discovered and perfected, Omega was lost and Rassilon rose to power, all this happened as the child remained unchanged, timeless.

The nameless and timeless child became the very basis for Rassilon research into regeneration and immortality. The Timelords, as they were now known, were vastly long lived in comparison to a normal human living many centuries before old age and death. This however wasn't enough for Rassilon once he had witnessed the child's longevity and apparent agelessness, he longed for a way to cheat death that would allow him to rule over Galifrey for eternity and turn the universe into his own personal playground with lesser creatures as his play things. It was during this time that the boy came to realise the truth of Rassilon, his cruelty and malice, and listened to the rumours of the truth about Omegas 'accident'.

The child started work on a living database called the Matrix as a place to store the minds of all Timelords upon their death to preserve the information and memories of the ones that went before. He had long been collecting the minds and memories of his family and friends as they each passed into the next great adventure but now he organised them and created a new sentience for the imprints to live on in, his own mind serving as the original analogue upon which the Matrix was based. Rassilon's bioengineering and work with the Looms had yielded results in his first test upon himself of endless regeneration. It was at which point they both decided that endless regeneration (immortality) was too much a curse for anyone to possess. They added genetic limits so that each Timelord would have 12 regenerations, 13 lives being deemed more than enough for anyone. The child watched as the first true Time Lords and Ladies were born of the Looms, their 13 lives encoded into their very DNA.

He watched Rassilon rise under their praise and worship, his entertainments and vices growing beyond control and decided it was time to do something before he destroyed them and the fledgling society they had created. The boy mad a plan to trap Rassilon and to limit the influence he had on the new Timelord society, He was loath to harm his friend so imprisonment was they way forward he decided. Moving through the newly built citadel he gathered what he needed, the private doorway to the dark tower in the death zone, a temporal manipulator and two newly forged links to the Matrix and access to the Looms. He spent some time in the Tower setting up a tomb and laying traps for the unwary, the greedy and the unwise. He left the temporal manipulator and one of the links to the Matrix there before heading to the Looms to set up the second Matrix link and then into the Cloisters to set his instructions in perpetuity. Preparations made he requested an audience with his friend Rassilon to discuss a new breakthrough with the Matrix, being ignorant to his intentions Rassilon came to the Tower alone.

They talked for many long hours of many things from stellar engineering, temporal mathematics and the Looms to the newly formed temporal schism and the foundation of the academy. As they talked Rassilon grew more and more still, his form growing cold and grey as the temporal manipulator froze his bodily functions in a moment of time and the tomb rose to cover and preserve him. The Matrix interface allowing them to talk long after his body was no longer capable of doing so. "So I am trapped here, what will you do now?" Rassilons voice from the Matrix interface asked. The boy looked up from where he sat, a tear rolling down his cheek and for the first time he spoke "Now with you unable to lead our children of time into the dark, I will disappear and be forgotten. It's time that I became a story and maybe find a purpose in the forgetting. I may even find my name or at least A name, never had one of those before." He rose from his seat reaching up to place a small hand on his friends arm before he turned and left the tomb and tower behind. "I look forward to hearing the story of The Timeless Child and the birth of the Timelords" echoed Rassilons voice as he activated the transmat back to the citadel. He hid the entrance to tower, the time scoop used to populate the death zone and everything relating to the death games hoping that it would never be found while knowing that everything hidden would come to light eventually. Moving swiftly he made his way to the Loom chamber avoiding anyone who came close. Presetting the Looms controls with a self erasing algorithm to hide what he had done while ensuring it could never happen again, the boy opened the link to the Matrix downloading everything he was into it before the activation of the Loom. His last thought before everything was gone absorbed by the Matrix was "I hope my name is something memorable". The Looms took the body of the Timeless Child reworking it and recoding it into a new person, a Timelord fresh and new, a babe ready for a brand new life.

The child was raised in a loving family; she had a best friend of the same age. They looked into the untempered schism and were accepted into the academy together, they raised families of their own with children and then grandchildren. Her friend left following a beat in his bones exploring the universe as he went, she regenerated this time into a male, older crotchety, but there was something there a feeling he couldn't place. He continued his education in the academy but the feeling grew, he ran to the Cloisters hiding from the guards. There he found the wraiths who guided him to the Matrix, so much poured through his head not all of it sticking the Looms had done too much damage to be fixed in a single regeneration or even a dozen. So the Matrix its self using the wraiths as its hands implanted a DNA key that would activate with enough energy triggering a new cycle of regeneration, multiple cycles if needed until the damage was repaired. The Matrix then erased its interference from his memory and edited his memories to hide the clues about the extent of its sentience. As a final gift the idea was planted in the Timelords mind to run, run as far and as fast as he could along with an underlying question and the need to find the answer. Waking in the Cloisters he was guided to the exit by the sliders and taking only enough time to gather his granddaughter Susan he stole a Tardis and ran away. At the back of his mind a single question played over and over, The Doctor…..Doctor Who?


End file.
